Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1887-07-10
CHAPTER xxx.
1--WE MUST PARr, JOHN

silence and gazed at the blackenlng ana
distorted corpses of the thunder-blasted
Beers. Then they went past them to the
tree which grew some ten PAGES or more on
the other side of the place of destruction.
There was some little difficulty in getting
the horses past the eorpses, but at last tney
came with q wheel and aud a snort OF
suspicion, and were tied up to the tree by
John. Meanwhile jess took some OF the
hard-boiled eggs out Of the basket ana
vanished, remarking that she was going
to take her clothes of and dry them IN the
sun while she ate her breakfast, and she
advised him to do the same. Accordingly,
as soon as she was well out Of sight behind
the shelter of the rocks, she proceeded to
get out other soddeH garments, IN itself a
task of no little difficulty. Then she
wrung them ont and spread them one by
one on. the fat, wster-washed stones
around, which were now thoroughly warm
ed with the sun. Next she went down a
few PAGES TO a pool under the shadow OF
the bank. in the rock-bed Of the river, and
bathed her bruises and washed the sand
and mud from her hair and feet. After
this she came and sat herself on a slab OF
fiat stone out of the glare of the sun, and
ate her breakfast of ~bard-boiled eggs, re-
hecting meanwhile on the position N
which she found herself. For her heart
WA very sore and heavy, and she could
ind it in her to wish that she was lying
somewhere beneath those rushing waters
She had calculated on death, and now she
was not dead, and she and her shame and
her trouble might yet live for many a year.
She was like one who in her sleep had
seemed to soar on angels wings out into
the airy depths, and then awakened with
n start to fiud that she had tumbled from
her bed. All the heroic scale, all the more
than earthly depth of passion, all the
s~piritualized desires that had sprung into
being beneath the shadow of the approach
ing end, had come down to the common level
OF an undesirable attachment, along which
she must now drag her weary feet for many
q year. Nor was that all. She had been
false to Bessie, and more, she had broken
Bessie's lovers troth. She had tempted
him and he had fallen, and now he was as
bad as she. Death would have justified
all this; she would never have done 1t had
she thought she was going TO live; but now
Death had cheated her, rs she mas q way OF
doing with people TO whom his presence Is
more or les desirable, and left her to cope
with the spirit she had invoked when his
sword was quiyering over her.
What would be the end of it, ~supposing
they escaped? What could be the end ex-
cept misery? 1t should go no further, than
it had gone, that she swore; no, moi If it
broke her heart and his too. The con-
ditions were altered again, and the memory
of those dreadful and wonderful hours
when they two swung upon the raging
river and exchanged their uudying trOth,
with the grave for their alter, must be a
memory and nothing more. Ii had risen
ON their lives like some beautiful yet ter
rible dream-image Of celestial joy, and now
like a dream il must vanish. And yet IT
was no dream, except in 80 far as all her
life was a dream and a vision, q riddle OF
which glimpses of the answer came as
rarely as CLEANS of sunshine on a rainy
day. Alas! il was no dream; it was a
portion of the living, breathing past, that
having once been is immortal in its every
part and moment, ~incarnating as it does
the very spirit of Immortality, az utter in
capacity to change. As the act was, ss
the word had been spoken, so would act
and word be forever and forever. And now
this uudying thing must be Gagged and cast
about with the semblance Of death and
clouded over with the shadow Of an unreal
f~orgetfulness. Oh, it was bitter, very Bit
ter! What would it be now to 60 away,
right away from him, and know him mar
ried TO her own sister, the other woman
1 i'll -. .;.l.O NNhak mnnll - h. 20
think of BesSie's sweetness slowly creeping
into her empty place and filling it, of Bes-
sizes gentle, constant love covering up the
recollection of their wilder passion, per-
vading it covering it up as the twilight
slowly pervades and covers up the day,
till at last perhaps il was all blotted out
and forgotten in the night OF fOrgetfulneSs?
And yet il must be so, she was deter
mined that il should be so. Alb, that she
had died then with his kiss upon her lips!
| Why had he not let her die? And the
poor girl shook her damp hair over her
face and sobbed in the bitterness of her
heart, as Eve might have sobbed when
Adam ~reproached her.
But, naked or dressed, sobbing will not
mend matters in this sad world of ours, .
fact that jess had the sense to realize; so
| she presently wiped her eyes with her hair,
having nothing else handy to wipe them
with, and set to work to get into her
partially-dried garments again, a process
| calculated to ~irritate the most fortunate
and happy-minded woman in the whole
wide world. Certainly in her present
frame of mind those damp, bullet-torn
| clothes drove jess nearly wild, 80 much so
that had she been a man she would
probably have sgOrn-a consolation that
her sex denied ner. Fortunately she had
q tr~avelliDg-comb in her pocket, with
which she made shift to do her curling hair,
if hair can be said to be done when one
has not a hairpin or even q bit of string to
fasten it up with.
Then, after 8 last and frightful struggle
with her sOdden boots, that seemed to take
almost as much out o: her rs her roll at
the bottom of the Vaal, she rose and walked
back to the spot where she had left John
an hour before. He was employed, when
she reached him, in saddling up the second
of the two grays, with the saddles and
brides that he had removed from the car
cases of the horses which the lightning
had destroyed.
"Hullo, jess, yoa look quite smart.
Have you dried yonr c'othess' he said.
al have after q fashion,"
Yes" she answered.
He looked at her. ''Why, dearest, You
have been crying, Come, things are black
snough, but it is no use crying. At M
rate, we have got of with our lives 80 far"
John, said jess, sharply, there mnst
be no mere OF that. Things have changed.
We were dead last night; now we have
come to life again. Besides" she added,
with a ghost Of q laugh, perhaps you will
see Bessie tomorrow, / should think we
ought to have got to the end of our mis-
fortunes"
Johns faee fell, IS the recollection of
the impossible and most tragic position in
which they were placed, physically and
morally. swept into his mind.
"My dearest Jess" he said, what is to
De doaeS" ii.
She stamped her foot. in the bitter
anguish of her heart. ~ told you," she
said. 'sthat there must he no more of that